For the past two years, I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you on a variety of important issues within the mobility industry. I greatly appreciated the letters and e-mails I received and the opportunity to engage in a personal dialogue with many of you on a wide range of issues.
In the coming months, the topics and the authors of these columns will take a slightly different path from the past. Much like the mobility industry, SAE International continually responds to a rapidly changing marketplace. As a result, we're reinventing, re-engineering, and refocusing our programs, products, and services to ensure that we deliver maximum value to you, the mobility engineering community.
While this process has been under way since the onset of 2009, several of these changes are being rolled into the marketplace in the coming weeks and months.
Throughout last year, we spoke with our customers and members, gaining insights into what they value and need most from SAE International. We were pleased to hear that we're doing a lot right. But, we also learned a great deal about how your needs are changing and how we can better facilitate your work.
In short, we asked, and you told us. And, now we are responding.
So, we plan on using this column to share with you what we are doing to provide even more value. In addition, we want to give you a bit more insight as to why and how we do these things, and also let you hear firsthand from those responsible for the programs, products, and services we provide.
More importantly, however, we hope you use it as an opportunity to let us know how we are doing, and continue to let us know how we can make our portfolio more relevant and valuable.
In the next two articles we will feature the new SAE 2010 World Congress and SAE International’s new membership model. Then, throughout the year, we will talk about many of the other new and exciting offerings from SAE International.
I hope that you find these columns to be both informative and entertaining. We look forward to providing you with quality and value in all that we do.
As always, I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to share your thoughts by e-mailing focus@sae.org.
David L. Schutt, SAE Chief Executive Officer